


Visitors

by Setcheti



Series: The Last Chance Diner [5]
Category: Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort/Angst, Crossover, Gen, Not OTP Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 10:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1424506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Setcheti/pseuds/Setcheti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean had just refilled Steve’s coffee when he spotted somebody approaching the diner on foot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitors

**Author's Note:**

> The now larger AU was off and running again, adding new elements as it went, and the author was getting suspicious. “What are you up to?” And the AU snorted, not slowing down. “Just wait, you’ll see.”

In hindsight, Dean thought he should have taken Bruce’s offhand comment about Steve not blaming people for their past coming back to bite them on the ass as a warning that that very thing was about to happen. In his old life he would have…but this wasn’t his old life, it was his new one, and he’d stopped looking for signs and portents in every little thing that he encountered. He had the wards to keep bad things out – if it meant him harm, it just couldn’t get in. He also had Steve’s tattoo sleeve, put on with Bruce’s indelible inks, which had so much symbolic power in it that if Dean hadn’t been…well, Dean, it might have actually been bad for him. Dean being Dean, though, it just felt not-uncomfortably warm. And for some reason it made him feel safe, even though he was already pretty safe and there wasn’t really a whole lot that could hurt him in the first place.

Not physically, anyway. 

It was a Wednesday night and Steve was there early, hours before Bruce and Cecil would be due in for their after-show dinner, because of course he was because Dean had completely ignored the warning which normally would have made him sit up and take notice of ‘coincidences’ like that. Dean had just refilled Steve’s coffee when he spotted somebody approaching the diner on foot. At first he thought it was a stranded motorist looking for help, but then the solitary walker stopped dead at the edge of the warded barrier, taking a step back and cocking his head to look at the thing that had prevented him from going any farther. The Technicolor light from the setting desert sun painted the long coat he was wearing with fiery gold, and Dean sucked in a surprised breath. Steve put down his coffee and turned around to look. “Who’s that?”

“Trouble. Possibly. Maybe.” Dean had been hoping this visitor, if he ever came, would not be trouble…but his inked tattoos were tingling in a way that told him the one sigil was being tested. The angel was trying to ‘nudge’ him to come outside. Because the wards wouldn’t let it come in. Dean thought about that for a minute, then tore his eyes away and nodded to Steve. “I’ll go handle him, be back in a few.”

Steve just nodded, but Dean could feel the younger man’s eyes following him out. Mentally, he cursed Castiel’s timing. He’d just had to show up when Steve was there, the one person on Earth most likely to want to jump in and help. Hopefully the angel wouldn’t do anything that would make Steve think he needed to; the poor guy wouldn’t be any match for an angel, and Dean would hate for him to get hurt over some angelic power-play bullshit. Or worse, to get dragged into Dean’s old life, because that was a place Dean did not ever want Steve to be.

The walk across the parking area seemed longer than usual, but that could have just been because Dean didn’t walk out that way very often, or maybe because this time he’d rather not be walking out there at all. Finally, though, he reached the warded barrier and stopped, not going through it; the faint frown that crossed the angel’s face told him he’d been expected to come out, and he steeled himself. This was gonna be nasty. “Cas,” he said. “I know you weren’t just in the area and decided to stop.” No need to mention that if he had been, the wards would have let him through. 

Castiel shook his head. “No, this place where you work is a long way from anywhere I might need to be. I came to see if you were ready to come with me, I have some things...”

Dean held up a hand, cutting off the description of things he would be needed for. “I told you I was done with this bullshit for good. Did you think I’d change my mind? I haven’t.”

Cas cocked his head in that way he had, the way that meant he was attempting to apply logic to the situation. “You were just tired, that’s what everyone told me. They said you’d be back once you’d had a break, but once it got to be over a year they started saying that maybe someone needed to come get you, remind you of what you needed to be doing. They said humans get…comfortable if they stay in one place for a while and you have to shake them up to get them moving again.”

“I am comfortable,” Dean confirmed, but shook his head. “And that isn’t the bad thing you’re making it out to be, Cas. I’ve been training and fighting for thirty years, give or take: I’m done. The only thing I need to be doing is what I’m doing. I get paid to run this diner. I like running this diner. And I intend to keep on running this diner. Do you understand?”

The angel shook his head. “You were born to fight.”

“Nobody is _born_ to fight,” Dean snapped, patience starting to unravel. “You guys monkeyed with my family line, yeah – but that was all about Sammy and he’s not here anymore. I was not ‘born’ to fight – I was _raised_ to fight, to protect Sammy if something happened to Dad.” His jaw tightened; it was still a sore spot, even now. “He’s gone, I’m done, that’s it.”

The angel shook his head, slowly. “No, that is not it. You are still needed; there is still work to be done. You cannot stay here.”

Dean shook his head right back. “Yes, I can. And I will. This is my life now, I like it, and if you don’t like it…well then fuck you, hit the road.”

Castiel was starting to get mad now. “You are going to help me, Dean Winchester. You owe me. I pulled you out of Hell!”

Dean went cold all over. He took a step back. “I don’t owe you…because you guys are the ones who made sure I went there in the first place.” He waved a shaking hand. “It was all about your stupid, pointless games. Move a piece here, move a piece there. I’m not a piece! I’m a person!”

Castiel went red. “You are _nothing_ if you aren’t doing what you were created for!”

“Not true.” The firm, quiet voice that came from behind Dean made him jump. Steve was there, and he looked mad and bothered and upset all at the same time. He put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “People are created to be people, that’s all. And nobody, not even you, has the right to say otherwise. When a man is done…he’s done, and that’s that. If he decides to help you again, it will be on his own terms, the way it should have been from the beginning.”

The angel glared at him. “This has nothing to do with you, and you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Steve snorted. “Bet me,” was his response, and then he used the hand on Dean’s shoulder to gently pull him back, farther from the angry angel and the barrier. He waved the angel off with his other hand. “Go on, shoo. Nobody here needs or wants to listen to your shit.”

Castiel’s eyes started to glow. “I can unmake this place. I can _take_ it away from him!”

Steve just looked at him, unimpressed. “Then that makes you evil,” he replied. “Are you evil?”

Under any other circumstances, Dean would have found the gobsmacked, almost horrified look on the usually unflappable angel’s face funny. Castiel’s mouth moved a few times, no words coming out…and then he vanished. Steve gently pulled Dean back into the diner, sat him on a stool, and then went behind the counter and started doing something. Dean was too far out of it to do more than register that Steve was back there where he wasn’t supposed to be, and honestly too far out of it to care. Castiel. Had come to the diner, Dean’s refuge, and he’d threatened to destroy it. He’d come to try to drag Dean back out into the never-ending war. He’d been willing to do it by force.

A little part of Dean had really been hoping, all this time, that Cas had left him alone because he cared enough to. An even smaller part had hoped that if Cas ever did show up…it would be just because he wanted to see Dean again, because he missed Dean but cared enough to understand and accept Dean’s decision.

That little part was screaming in agony now, and bleeding to death from the brutal wound it had just received.

A cup thumped on the counter, and larger, stronger hands wrapped Dean’s shaking hands around it. “Drink that,” Steve ordered quietly. “It’s a little weird, but I used to…well, my mom used to make it for me, when I was upset. It’ll help, I promise.”

Dean raised the cup, sniffed it, couldn’t figure out what exactly it was he was smelling, and just went ahead and drank some of it. It tasted like an ice cream float made with soda, except it was hot and light and not very sweet. He drank some more, frowning. “Is this…”

Steve was quick-sketching something on the notepad Dean usually kept under the counter. “Keep drinking.”

Dean drank some more. “Steve, this is Coke and milk. That you heated in the microwave.”

“I told you it was weird. Always works, though, always.” A quick flash of a smile. “You’re responding to me and you can think again, right?”

That, Dean reflected, was true. He supposed it had worked. “Your mom?”

“Died when I was sixteen. She was a nurse.”

Huh. “Mine died when I was four. A demon killed her.” He took another drink. “We finally killed him back, but it took a while – I was in my twenties by the time Dad finally tracked him down.”

“Well, I can’t imagine he would have left a business card behind so you could find him easier,” Steve said, not reacting to the word ‘demon’ at all. He was using his phone to take a picture of the sketch he’d just made, and then he typed, and then he sent. Dean couldn’t ever remember Steve trying to use his phone in the diner before except to take a picture, and he was about to warn him that there wasn’t any cell reception when the phone first dinged with an incoming text and then rang. Steve answered it. “Well? Yes, that was it, what did he say? Well, because it didn’t fucking belong here, Tony, that’s why – and it was trying to get him to come out of the protected area, it even tried to threaten him. So Thor…really? Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for him. No…no, I’ve got it, it’s fine. Yeah, someday, but today is not that day. Yeah…yeah, thanks. Okay, bye.” He disconnected and tucked the phone away in his pocket, and he found a smile for Dean, who had started just a little when he’d said ‘protected area’. Steve knew about the wards? “I was out of my depth, but I knew someone who wouldn’t be,” he said, and pushed over the piece of paper he’d taken the picture of. “Hopefully I didn’t miss any important details.”

Dean blinked. It was a rough sketch of Castiel as he’d looked just now, outside…but the picture included his wings, and his sword. “The fuck…you saw that?”

Steve shrugged. “Didn’t you?”

“No, I…I didn’t.” Dean swallowed. “I knew it was there – I know he looks like that – but I can’t see it like this, at least not most of the time.”

“Huh. I don’t know why I could see it, I just could.” Steve took the picture back, frowning at it. “Well, it must have been good enough, because Tony said Thor took one look and demanded to know where I was. So seeing this,” he waggled the paper, “apparently made him angry.” Dean blinked at him, and Steve shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me unless you want to, and I’m not asking. But that guy was bad news, whether he looked like an angel or not.”

Dean swallowed again. “He is – an angel, I mean. He’s…we’d been through a lot together.”

Steve moved to stand beside him, sliding an arm around Dean’s shoulders. “That sucks,” he said, and then moved the cup Dean’s hand was still clenched around. “Drink the rest, go on. Thor will be here any time now.”

Soothed by the younger man’s comforting nearness, Dean drained the rest of the warm milk mixture and put the cup down. And then he thought of something. “Wait, how…”

Steve took a deep breath, gave Dean’s shoulders a squeeze, and then backed off again. “Um, yeah, I guess I need to explain. He’ll actually be here any minute, when he’s upset he’s…really fast. I’m pretty sure you’ll know who he is when you see him, but I just…” His hands clenched into helpless, frustrated fists, then released. “I didn’t want to…you have to understand, it was just so nice to have a friend who liked me for _me_ , who took me at face value. I didn’t lie,” he hastened to add. “I just didn’t tell you everything.”

Dean snorted. “Not like I’ve told you everything about me either, Steve,” he began, and then he stopped. Because something had just become visible outside, something moving in their direction really fast from really high up in the sky. It was red, and then it got closer and for one giddy, unreal moment Dean thought it was Superman…and then it landed and it was a giant of a blond man wearing scale armor and a red cape, carrying a hammer. The man was looking at something – the warded barrier, that was it – and then he raised the hammer and poked at the barrier with it, and then he walked through and strode across the flat nothingness of the diner’s parking area like a man who was expecting trouble.

Steve went to the door and opened it for him, and the larger man took in everything in a glace – although his eyes lingered longer on Steve, assessing him like he was looking for damage. “That creature…”

“It – he – went away. Or at least I think he did.” Steve was visibly nervous. “Thor, this is my friend Dean. He knows what it was, but he couldn’t see…all of it.” He picked up the sketch and handed it over. “I could. Tell me that manipulative bastard’s not actually an angel.”

“I could tell you that, but I would be lying – and I would not lie to you,” Thor responded. He studied the sketch carefully. “I believe you can see him because of the Cube,” he finally said. “If my investigations with Friend Bruce have not led us both astray, the serum you were given was created using the power of the Cube, at least in part. I was loath to mention this to you until I was certain, but…” he waved the sketch, “I am now mostly certain. You see him as he is, as I would, or any of my people.” A large hand landed on a tense shoulder, squeezing. “This is a good thing, Friend Steve, a very good thing.”

And then Thor looked at Dean, who was wide-eyed and practically frozen. He’d been in the presence of a god before, he recognized the aura of power, and those were not good memories. Thor, however, bowed to him. “It is my pleasure to finally meet you, Friend Dean,” he said. “I am sorry it had to be under such circumstances. You have nothing to fear from me. Tell me, did the creature harm you with aught other than its deceitful tongue?”

It took Dean a minute to sort that out, and then he shook his head – a little too hard, because Steve immediately moved back in and put his arm around him again. Dean let him. “No, he couldn’t get through the wards, at least not physically. I just…I knew him, once I’d have even said we were friends. I didn’t think…” he swallowed hard. “I didn’t think he’d come here.”

“And you hoped that if he did it would be for a better reason.” Steve shrugged when Dean looked up at him in shock. “Been there, just not with an angel. It sucks.”

“I concur,” Thor agreed. “It does, indeed, ‘suck’.” He laid the picture back on the counter and sat down on a stool of his own. “Your barrier is well done, Friend Dean. It permitted me to enter after Mjolnir touched it, perceiving I was no threat to you. The creature has not gone far away, however, so I will linger here for a time if that is acceptable to you. And I sense you have questions. You may ask them.”

Dean blinked at him. “You’re a god.”

“I would once have been considered as such, yes. No more, however.”

“Why are you here?”

To his surprise, the big man looked embarrassed. “I angered my father, Odin, and he exiled me to Midgard – your Earth – until such time as he was certain I had learned the lessons he deemed necessary. That time has passed, but I am needed here as I am not currently in Asgard, so I remain to assist my friends. Again, I am no threat to you. Friend Steve speaks of you often.”

Dean looked up at Steve, who was blushing, and then looked back at Thor. “Serum?”

Steve answered him. “Um, that would be supersoldier serum. There was this artifact from Asgard, where Thor is from – a blue cube, that’s what he was talking about. The scientist who made the serum must have used the cube to…well, to make it, which would explain why no one has ever been able to make any more of it.” A deep breath. “I volunteered for the experiment, I wanted to help…but I was pretty much a 90-pound weakling with a whole handful of health problems, I was 4F all the way.” He stretched out one tattooed arm, rippling with muscle. “The serum fixed that, and I was able to go help fight, like I’d wanted to. But they…well, kind of like it sounded with that angel talking to you, some people thought I should just keep helping forever, you know? And for a long time I didn’t think I had a choice in that. You showed me that I did.” Dean was frowning up at him, still puzzled, and for some reason that seemed to make Steve really happy. “I was in the army as part of a special project…during World War II. My code name was Captain America.”

“Okay.” Dean recognized the name, of course, and he knew there were comic books, but he didn’t know much aside from that. “You’ve been alive all this time?” Steve shook his head. “No?”

“He was frozen, in the Northern ice,” Thor answered gravely. “He sacrificed himself to save his homeland, and due to the magic of the serum in his body the ice merely made him sleep and did not kill him.”

“They found me a few years ago, and here I am,” Steve finished with a shrug. “I know I was born ninety-odd years ago…but really, I’m only twenty-eight.”

“And yet despite his youth he is a fine captain whom I am pleased to follow,” Thor boomed, and Dean had to laugh when Steve blushed really violently. Which made Thor laugh too. “Our captain’s modesty is as great as his achievements. But I would not embarrass him by relating those tales – this day, at this time, anyway. I shall instead tell you a tale to lift your spirits. Do you know aught of Asgard? It is a wondrous place, my homeland…” 

 

About an hour later, Castiel appeared at the edge of the wards again. Thor had been telling Dean and Steve a series of funny stories about things he’d done with his friends, Sif and the Warriors Three – Dean thought that sounded like an indy rock band but had so far refrained from saying it out loud – but the sort-of deity from Asgard stopped talking and turned around the moment the angel became visible. He stood up, frowning. “I will attend to this,” he rumbled, looking more annoyed than anything else, which kind of blew Dean’s mind. “Stay here, both of you. The creature wishes you to come out so that it may attempt to work its will upon you again, Friend Dean, but you do not need to listen to the lies and half-truths which pour from its borrowed mouth.” That made Steve stand up, eyes widening, but Thor shook his head. “I will explain later, my friend – suffice it to say, the creature in its present form is an abomination. Do not leave this building. The creature is no threat to _me_.”

He stalked out of the diner, red cloak billowing behind him in a very impressive fashion, and Steve sat back down, shaking his head when Dean raised a questioning eyebrow at him. “Yeah, he just benched both of us – not that I think I could fight an angel and win, I can’t fight a god and win either.” The eyebrow went up higher. “Thor’s little brother was a bad guy, tried to take over the planet with an army of aliens and some giant flying dragon-worm…thing. He died a while back. Thor really never got over him turning bad, and then he died, so we just…”

“Try not to bring it up?” It was Dean’s turn to shrug when Steve nodded. “Yeah, I’ve had more than a few situations like that of my own. Sometimes it’s so bad it’s better to just not talk about it, ever.” He waved a hand to indicate the waiting angel on the other side of the parking area. “That’s what he wants me to go back to. More death, more betrayal, more being played with like a chess piece…I just can’t.” He looked down at the diner’s worn checkered floor, remembering the wannabe robber who’d tried to shoot him cleaning it on his hands and knees, crying in fear. Because he’d fired at point-blank range and Dean had just stood there, unharmed. “It would…if I give in now, it’ll be forever. I’ll be playing their games forever.” His shoulders slumped. “I’d rather be running this diner forever, honestly. Is that crazy or what?”

“Make perfect sense to me,” Steve told him. He was looking at the floor too, seeing what Dean didn’t know. “I’d rather be doing tattoos for people forever, but…certain people, in the government, thought me being stuck like this meant I should be their eternal soldier.”

“Stuck…”

“The serum – I can’t age. You?”

Dean rubbed the scar on his arm. “The Mark of Cain. I can’t either.”

Steve clapped him on the shoulder and managed a smile. “Well, at least we won’t be alone, huh?”

And Dean couldn’t help it, he chuckled. One worry, down the drain – in spades. “Yeah, there is that.”

 

At the edge of the parking lot, Thor was regarding the angel with a mixture of exasperation and pity. “I knew you would return, so I waited.”

“I’m here to see Dean.”

“You have seen him,” Thor replied. “You harmed him, inflicted what to a man less strong of spirit and brave of heart – and without a friend of equal mettle at his back – would have been a mortal wound. You will not be permitted to harm him again.”

The creature was frustrated by this, shaking its head. “I didn’t touch him, how could I have inflicted any wound on him? Or are you speaking of his conscience paining him?”

Thor just looked at him. He almost felt sorry for the creature; he could tell it was trying to understand, at least in part, but understanding was not coming to it. “You crushed his hope, albeit a small and fearful one,” he explained slowly, as though speaking to a child. “He had hoped that, if you were to come here, it would be in understanding and friendship. Instead you came only to remove him from his sanctuary, to coerce him into returning to the fight as shield to your sword. You came to use.” He shook his head. “My captain, who was here with him, first asked of you by saying ‘tell me that manipulative bastard is not really an angel’.” The creature looked horrified, and he shrugged. “He was raised in the ways of your Church, at least as a child. You are not as your kind are painted in their tales, you were…a disappointment, if I read his feelings aright.” He scowled then. “So you have hurt two, not one. I am most displeased.”

The creature tried to bluster. “This isn’t your place, Asgardian – false god! Take your interfering ‘friend’ and leave, Dean has work to do.”

“Friend Dean indeed has work to do, and he has been doing it – here, in this place,” Thor maintained quietly. “He has done more good than you, unworthy one, can comprehend. Sometimes it is the quiet word, the thoughtful act, which turns aside more evil than a shout or a blade or an army of might. He bids your pointless war stay out,” he said, waving his hand to indicate the barrier, “because inside there is peace such as you shall never know. Now begone, creature. I am here, and this peace will not be torn asunder by you. Race toward Ragnarok on your own, without hiding behind humans…or hiding inside their stolen shells.”

It actually took a step back. “It isn’t like that…”

“You wear the shell of a human, you animate it as though it were a puppet and use it to fool those who cannot see you.” A slight, rather nastily pleased smile. “My captain _can_ see you, creature; the power of my people if not their blood runs in his veins, although he knew it not until this very hour. Because of you.” A short, sarcastic bow. “We had not yet decided how best to tell him, so my thanks for that.” 

The creature’s borrowed face went red. “I am not here to deal with _you_ ,” it snapped. “I have come to get Dean, to remind him of what he is supposed to be doing, to set his feet back on the path they are destined to walk. I am _not_ leaving without him.”

“And so what would you do to achieve this goal?” Thor asked. “Rip away the contentment he has found, tear asunder the stability he has contrived for himself? For what? Because you desire his company? No, because if that were the case you would merely join him here. Because you wish a pair of human hands to do the work you cannot, and his are the hands you know and trust? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is a bit of both. But you still have no right to demand his aid, or the sacrifice of this life he has built.”

“I saved him...”

“He did not ask you to.” Thor had been guessing, but when the angel looked away he knew he was right. “Ah, so that it is. You imposed a debt upon him in the furtherment of plans laid before his birth, and now you call upon that debt when he refuses to do your bidding.” His upraised hand stopped the angel's argument cold. “You use a dishonorable advantage to manipulate an honorable warrior; there is no excuse you can make, angel.”

A snort. “My name is Castiel.”

“You do not deserve to be named, you are but the minion of an unjust, careless lord who leaves you and your brethren to your own devices, and cares not if you dishonor his name by your choices.”

Castiel was getting angry again. “You cannot speak against the Most High like that, False God!”

Thor snorted again, unimpressed. “Your lord did not put those words in your mouth, so they mean nothing. Nor would he claim such himself, as he would long since have allowed this world to burn…as he once attempted to drown it. Who saved the humans of Midgard then, angel? Your kind told one man – a drunken, overly pious fool – to place his family and no others on a boat with their livestock and all else he could gather. Would Midgard flourish today had not my family and the Hellenic lords and those of Egypt and the island nations joined our forces and saved all that we could?”

Castiel snorted back. “The humans had grown willful, they defied the Lord and his laws. He was angry with them, they had to be punished.”

“If you are angry with your child, do you kill it and all its siblings? Do you kill the children of your neighbors as well, and then burn the home they lived in?” Thor shot back. “My father cried for the innocent lives lost to those senseless, angry waters, as did my mother. Your lord did not, I would wager, unless he shed tears for himself because he had killed all of his worshippers and the sound of six frightened voices calling to him from a high mountain was not music enough to please his ears.”

“You dare…!”

And that was when an older-appearing man popped into being beside the furious angel, rolling his eyes. He was nattily dressed, shorter than both Castiel and Thor, and had thinning hair and a scruffy three-day beard. “If he doesn’t, I will,” the man said in an amused, European-accented tenor. He beamed at Thor and stepped through the barrier like it wasn’t even there after a moment of speculative appraisal. “What a clever, clever boy Dean is. Thor! It’s been ages. And how is your lovely sister?”

Thor snorted, also appearing amused. “I would say you should ask her yourself, but she would doubtless do you harm just for appearing in her presence. Hel was ever a jealous lover – and a sore loser.”

The man laughed. “His sister, my ex – well, one of them,” he told Castiel, who was looking miffed. “Oh, don't be like that. If you hadn't shown up here unworthily, his wards wouldn't have kept you out – being forced to wait on the porch like a door-to-door salesman is your own fault.” He pursed his lips, shaking his head. “Oh, and by the way, while I'm here and thinking about it...no, absolutely not, never again. He's staying dead.”

Something very like triumph crossed the angel's face. “He's in Hell. Dean wouldn't want his brother to stay in Hell, Crowley.”

Crowley looked disappointed. “Just how many times do you think you can play the boy that particular way, Castiel, really? Of course he wouldn't...but that's because he doesn't know where in my domain his father and brother are. I shall tell him now, however, to keep you from playing this sick little game ever again.”

“You've done it too.”

“Because you left me no choice. I'd tell him that too, but he feels betrayed enough already – by you, not me – and I shan't add to it.” He straightened. “Dean Winchester has paid his debt, angel. In full.”

Something that wasn’t thunder rumbled in the sky overhead and echoed through the ground under their feet, and Castiel took another step back. “You...he…the Mark…you can't do that, we need him!”

Crowley just shook his head. “It's done. Now go on, shoo,” he ordered, flapping one hand dismissively much the way Steve had earlier. “You've no legitimate business in this place, by your own admission, and I would rather share stories with Thor here – who I haven't seen in ages – over some of this pie I've been hearing such wonderful things about. Go sulk somewhere else.”

Thor slapped him on the back. “I, too, have heard many good things about this pie – we shall feast and share stories of our misadventures!” He raised an eyebrow at the angel, who was still standing there, something like pity once again crossing his face. “Do not come back,” he warned quietly. “My friend has also found sanctuary in this place, and he also has earned the right to seek contentment where he will. I will not take kindly to any attempt to rip that from him. Do you understand?”

Castiel nodded once, stiffly, and then disappeared. Crowley sighed. “I thought it was cute, once,” he admitted to Thor. “He plays the idiot well, and Dean was...well, a time or two 'besotted' was a word I would have chosen. Don't tell him, but his handling of that betrayal was what won him his final pardon.” He slanted a look up at the much taller man. “It's what won it for your young friend Steven as well.”

Thor quirked a smile. “Did you lead him here, then? I had wondered if some guiding hand was involved.”

Crowley smiled back, shaking his head. “No, it truly was a coincidence. Or at least I think it was. If there was a guiding hand involved, it wasn't one I could see – and I did check, his annoying family insisted on it. They’re together,” he explained. “It’s punishment enough for them both, believe me. And sometimes for me as well, but the job is what it is.”

“A difficult job, but you do it well,” Thor allowed. “I had once hoped…but it was not to be.”

The reigning King of Hell clasped his arm in sympathy. “I heard. I’m sorry.”

Thor nodded, returning the clasp. “It is still too near for me to speak of, but thank you.” He took a deep breath, putting his grief over the loss of his wayward brother back out of sight again. “Come, I shall introduce you to Friend Steve, and you may add your tales to mine. I was telling of my own friends on Asgard, to distract Friend Dean from his dark thoughts.”

“I can see where they would have, since you and your friends together were always bloody well insane,” Crowley told him. He winked. “Lady Sif still unattached?”

“She would tear you in half for even thinking of it.”

“Probably,” Crowley agreed amiably, not appearing bothered by that idea in the slightest. He released Thor’s arm – which was nearly double the size of his – with a pat. “We should go back in, the boys are getting worried. And the other two are already on their way here, tonight’s broadcast was rather short.” Thor raised a questioning eyebrow, and the smaller man shrugged. “You could say he…keeps his eye on things, yes. He worries.”

“I am glad to hear that. Friend Steve worries as well, but there is little he can do at present.” They began walking back to the diner. “I have heard this ‘show’, and I found it confusing in the extreme. The inhabitants of this strange town all seem to be insane, and their chosen leaders are corrupt and capricious. Why would a scientist of such caliber as Carlos choose to live there?”

Crowley was still laughing when Thor held the door to the diner open for him. “We’ll get Cecil to explain it to you,” he finally managed. “Be sure you ask him that exact question.” He beamed at the wary dark-haired man who had stood up when they came in. “Dean! Lovely to see you again. Don’t worry, this is just a social visit – but you already knew that, nice job on the wards, very nice. And I wanted to get some of this pie I’ve been hearing about before my bottomless friend Thor here ate it all…”

**Author's Note:**

> About Coke and milk and why you probably don’t want to try it at home: Steve’s mother would have been using cola syrup from the drugstore/soda fountain to flavor his milk, which is a very different animal, taste-wise, than actual canned soda. Steve had to improvise. And if you think about how long it must have taken him to find what he needed, get it just right, and then heat it up…well, Dean had to have been sitting there in emotional shock, not responding when Steve talked to him, for quite a while. It worked because it subtly distracted him, not because Coke and milk have magical shock-defying properties when mixed together and heated – Dean got caught up in trying to figure out what he was drinking, which broke the vicious mental cycle he was caught in, that was all.
> 
> On a further note, Steve’s mother would have probably been making that for him when he was sad or upset, not the same thing as what Dean was going through. So how did Steve know the subtle distraction trick would work? Obviously, because he’d done it before…for Bucky, during the war.


End file.
